DCCC: 'The Tea Party Is Over'

In a memo sent before Election Day, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee wrote that the Tea Party movement has effectively ended.

According to the DCCC, 2012 will be the “undoing of the 2010 Tea Party tsunami that crashed upon Washington.”

“The Tea Party is over,” the memo says.

The DCCC accused Tea Party Republicans of running on a “common agenda: blocking President Obama, repealing health care reform, opposing government regulation, favoring massive cuts in government spending and refusing to compromise.”

Americans happen to approve of such an agenda, though, as was reflected in 2010’s midterm elections.

The DCCC also accused Republicans of being on defense this election cycle when Democrats have been the ones defending their turf on the electoral map.

“The election has entirely been a battle defined by Democrats, as we’ve been on offense all cycle,” the memo states. “Regardless of whether they win or lose, the Tea Party of 2010 is over. They’ve been forced on defense in the message fight all cycle long, and now those who win will have done so by giving up on the Tea Party.”

Even mainstream media organizations like Yahoo! News have said such declarations could be “premature”:

Tea party-backed candidates dominated Republican primary contests across the country in 2012, launching what could be a new class of future Republican leaders. In Texas, Ted Cruz defeated the establishment candidate backed by Gov. Rick Perry, and in Indiana, Richard Mourdock forced longtime Republican Sen. Richard Lugar into early retirement. Looking to 2013, tea party groups who are begrudgingly backing Mitt Romney have vowed to press him, should he become president, toward conservative positions.

The tea party, a grass-roots network of conservative activists, drove many Republican House and Senate candidates to victory in the midterm elections two years ago, but its influence seems to be overshadowed in 2012 by the presidential election. Still, the infrastructure that was built since the movement launched in 2009 has been used to promote Republican congressional candidates and serve as a backup ground game for Romney’s presidential campaign.